I see this is an old video but I do appreciate your honest opinion. I have several friends who use CC. I sat in recently with my kids to observe foundations and was of course so impressed by all the things kids know and what they are learning. However I did not see any room for child led learning and that is something we have started doing and what my kids have been enjoying. You are absolutely right there are other avenues to an excellent education. CC is impressive but not for us. I did not see the fun in memorizing facts.
I'm glad this was helpful. Its so important to choose curriculum and "run your day " with your family's style and needs as the priority. We made the right choice. Were finishing up our best year we've ever had.
Thanks for sharing. I appreciated hearing your thoughts. We just finished a year of Essentials with our sixth grader and have been struggling HUGE with whether to proceed with Challenge A next year. We have three older kids who have already graduated from our homeschool, and we are still schooling our youngest. This was our 19th year of homeschooling, and we love this lifestyle, but our youngest does struggle with being a little lonely, so being part of a community was wonderful for her this year. I will say that I found community day itself to be very chaotic, and I personally didn't always find it to be super productive. However, the Essentials materials themselves were great and my daughter learned a lot. Most importantly, she loved the sense of "belonging", and our community was very active, so there were lots of opportunities for field trips, socials, etc. THAT part was awesome, and it makes me sad to think about losing that. I'm just not sure that academically Challenge A is a great fit for us. My daughter finds memory work incredibly tedious, and while I think some degree of it is super helpful, I worry that she won't enjoy drawing the world and labeling body systems and practicing Latin endings day after day....after day. I want her to enjoy learning, and I want the days we spend together at home to be interactive. And so the prayers continue. I find it helpful to hear what works with CC, and also what doesn't for various families. Like anything, there are pros and cons, and I know those will look different in every house. Six hours (ish) per day is a LONG time to hammer out an assignment list set entirely by someone else. It leaves no time for "adding in". I do understand scaling, but I also feel like scaling too much somewhat defeats the purpose of signing up (and paying lots of money) for the program. Anyway, thanks for sharing and best of luck with your new direction next year!! Blessings to you.
Hi Brooke! Did you end up staying in touch with those CC families? I would miss our community. What social activities have you found fun for your girls? Or did you join a co-op? Thx
We still talk to a couple families but are sooo happy with our decision to leave cc. We had the best school year ever! The girls were involved in a theatre production, competition dance, horse back riding lessons, youth group, did science and history with another family and just got together with a few families. No co-op for us. The cc co-op pretty much ruined that for us.